Labour conference: Benefit assessment nurses must be held to account, says Abrahams | Disability News Service

Sure, Jeremy Corbyn was the star of the Labour Party Conference, but if you’re long-term sick and/or disabled, you would have wanted to hear what Debbie Abrahams had to say.

And it was worth hearing:

Labour’s shadow work and pensions secretary has called for nurses and other healthcare professionals who write misleading benefit assessment reports to be “held to account”.

Debbie Abrahams said there had been “too many times” when healthcare professionals had written reports that did not “marry” with the evidence they had been given by disabled benefit claimants and what they had been told by those claimants during face-to-face assessments.

Abrahams (pictured, second from right), who was speaking at a fringe event organised by the Fabian Society and the disability charity Scope at Labour’s annual conference in Brighton, said: “Assessments are conducted by clinical professionals.

“We must be holding these clinical professionals to account.”

She said she had heard of “dozens and dozens” of cases, both in her national role and as a constituency MP, of assessment reports “not marrying at all with the detail in the assessment, the medical records that were supplied and so on”.

She told the meeting: “This cannot be allowed.”

Source: Labour conference: Benefit assessment nurses must be held to account, says Abrahams

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10 Comments

  1. Jeffrey Davies September 30, 2017 at 5:46 am - Reply

    ah if like me I chased mine through their employers dwp and their union yet these highly trained https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eN3fxzn0ro get off with just a slap on the wrist if ones lucky

  2. marcusdemowbray September 30, 2017 at 7:14 am - Reply

    Excellent, and long over-due.

  3. Barry Davies September 30, 2017 at 9:00 am - Reply

    I reported a nurse, who incidentally had no qualification to decide on my condition to the NMC, (nurse and midwifery council), the professions registering body. I detailed exactly how the Nurse had broken the code of conduct with references to each specific point. The reply I got was that the Nurse was working as an assessor not as a nurse, despite having to have the Nurse qualification and registration to do so, as such they could not take any action legally.

    This is what happens when a so called independent body has 11 of the 21 council members appointed by the government, lay people don’t care about the reputation of the profession, or apparently the raison deter to protect the public.

  4. Rupert Mitchell (@rupert_rrl) September 30, 2017 at 9:11 am - Reply

    Such behaviour by unprofessional and unqualified personnel must be brought to public attention and those found guilty of it must be prosecuted and removed from their employment.

  5. Brian September 30, 2017 at 12:57 pm - Reply

    As the name imply’s, ‘clinical professionals’ must expect harsh penalties for, (and lets be polite), deliberately misinterpreting assessments. Long gone is the persuasion that some may be mistakes or simple inaccuracy. The motive is now clear, to eliminate even the most deserving from the benefits system. There is also an unequivocal but quiet notion that the likes of Atos have mitigated corporate responsibility by carefully choosing the title of ‘professionals’, the mere acceptance of the title renders these assessors legally liable as individuals, and so they should be.

  6. Ian September 30, 2017 at 8:14 pm - Reply

    My dialysis nurses bent over backwards to help me claim PIP, all three saying I should claim it. Having chronic illnesses, I meet a lot of other nurses and doctors. I can’t imagine a single one of them lowering themselves to do blatantly unfair benefits assessments.

    I don’t know what these supposed health professional assessors think they’re doing but their relevent professional bodies should have been stepping in from the begnning. Many newer nurses are terrified of losing their registration for the most minor of misdemeanors and in my opinion causing distress and outright lying like this is a much more serious matter.

  7. Justin September 30, 2017 at 8:31 pm - Reply

    Totally agree & not the in house complaints procedure which i have dealt with 4 times & either get a thanks for pointing something out we will learn from it letter to have the same assessor do something similiar to someone else or to send out a weak willed answer list that is so contradictory (Capita) that it is going to the next level,ultimately the NMC, we need NHS PALS System,that will stop the Barham’s of this world, it is independant & more than likely minor misconduct or gross misconduct will end up before the regulator & they have to attend there own tribunal, the assessments are a waste of public money, a strain on the NHS & a real outcome should be a total revamp of the dwp.dfc, if that revamp means re-training by having them doing shadow work in nhs/homelessness/d/a units,of you go, learn by experience

  8. Christina Wood October 1, 2017 at 3:03 pm - Reply

    I’d be happy to do this but with regret I had a stroke 9 years ago it’s left me unable to walk

  9. Christina Wood October 1, 2017 at 3:06 pm - Reply

    I’d love to be able to do this but regrettably I suffered a stroke some 9 years ago

  10. Dez October 1, 2017 at 8:49 pm - Reply

    Unfortunately this sad situation is very much the same approach that has been carried on in most legal personal injury claims especially with tame insurance consultants who come complete with their own special tricks to prove false or exaggerated claims. Unless an examination is witnessed or recorded the claimants side is generally ignored against that nice honest so called professionals opinion…. To hold one of these so called independent professionals to account you will need a history of falsehoods and dumbed down claims and most certainly recordings or witness accounts to catch them out so they can be flushed out of the system. Knowing that claimants are unlikely to have the resources to seek out a second opinion they know they are on a winner. Honest specialists will not last for long if they do not deliver enough failed or reduced claims so the system works against honest results.. Sad times.

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